Torment Beamdog's Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition

[Goral]

Post negative reviews for Planescape: Torment while you still can, after April 11th all reviews will be merged and EE will profit from positive reviews that praised the original.

 

[Lilura]

lolGoral. Going HARD.

 

[Black]

He fights for what he believes in.

 

[Repulsive]

I'm gonna pick up the GoG version before this abomination replaces it.

 

[GloomFrost]

Damn just finished the "spiritual successor" of Torment and soon the real remastered torment coming out and then we have Starcraft remaster oh oh oh and dont forget about Full Throttle remaster!!! And hopefully some time soon IWD2 and Diablo 2 remasters!! What a time to be alive!!
Yeah the game industry is doomed.
P.S. why the hell are all NPC models so blurry and fake??

 

[Tacgnol]

My biggest concern was Beamdog shitting up the original source content with their own stuff (like they did in BGEEs), but it does sound like they are being conservative with this one.

Still not convinced it'll be worth the price, but it could have been much much worse (the TRANscendent one etc etc)

 

[Ramnozack]

Hopefully Beamdog has finally realized who their audience is for these games and has decided to drop the SJW bullshit.

 

[Arthandas]

So did they even fix anything that weren't in Quinn's fixpack?

 

[CRD]

What exactly did they improve and fix that would merit this re-release?

You know the purpose of "Enhancing" or "Remastering" something is usually to make it better? Can you imagine if they released these and the only difference was some Blur filter and black outlines?

What's the purpose of re-releasing something if you don't actually *do* anything other than as a quick cash-grab to be able to unearth and release further eldritch horrors on the gaming world in the future?

I already said it, just the zooming and a UI that works on high res screens making the game playable in 2017 is worth it. Because right now, throw to the original whatever mods do you want, but unless you are playing it on a 24" 720p screen from 2002, or you lower the TFT resolution to a non native one that would look like complete crap, PST is not comfortably playable anymore.

So, UI that scales and zoom/fov for me is enough to secure a sale. On top of that we get multiple minor improvements.

I hope that this EE sells like hotcakes and they learn that quality games even if they are old still have a place in this world and a lot of new people is able to play a cult classic they missed.

 

[Lilura]

So did they even fix anything that weren't in Quinn's fixpack?

Read the FAQ?

But basically, the biggest thing for me is the pathing routine improvement over the original.

 

[ArchAngel]

So did they even fix anything that weren't in Quinn's fixpack?

Actually they removed stuff from that pack they didn't like and did some other things based on what MCA and original design documents said. We don't know the exact details.

 

[Junmarko]

He fights for what he believes in.

Which is?

Alright Codex people, PST:EE is now live. There's a FAQ section on the Beamdog website which may answer some of your questions. In addition, here are some design decisions that I made as the PST:EE Project Lead:

• No new party members, quests, NPCs, areas or cinematic movies
• No new writing by anyone except Chris Avellone. In case you're wondering, Chris wrote a couple of new journal entries, adjusted a few special ability (i.e. Morte's Skull Mob) textual descriptions and composed the text that is displayed on the new "Welcome Screen". He also designed the Steam Achievements (wrote the text and specified the icon appearance) and named the new main menu buttons (i.e. Options = Alter Senses)
• No changes to existing writing except for a proofreading pass of the original game text by Chris Avellone (he asked to do this)
• No kits/classes/races/spells/items from BG2 or IWD
• No changes to the combat and general gameplay
• No "Story Mode" or "Heart of Fury" difficulty settings
• No multiplayer

Note that when I say "writing" I'm referring to the text that the player can access within the gameworld i.e. by talking to NPCs, inspecting objects, spells, items and the journal. That doesn't include text that is accessed outside of the gameworld such as the technical descriptions which explain how new UI options like "Zoom Lock" or "Hardware Mouse Cursor" function. The descriptions of those options were written by the developers who worked on implementing them, not by Chris.

All cynicism aside, what is the problem here? This is the best scenario anyone could have hoped for. Had anyone on the Codex a week ago said "There's a rumour that the mind behind PS:T, MCA, will be leading a conservative re-release of PS:T" - I would've laughed my fucking ass off.

Had Avellone not been credited, I'd understand the emphasis on crediting Black Isle/Interplay upfront, but this is a far better way to pay respect.

Crediting the individual/s responsible, is better than crediting the company, especially when said company has been defunct and irrelevant for nearly two decades. Avellone, Sawyer, Cain and Urquhart mean more to anyone now than "Black Isle/Interplay". They hold more weight, because they are actually still part of the industry.

A company is only as good as the people who work there. Bioware is a perfect example. Look at the history of that name and tell me you don't go from smiling to cringing. The individuals ALWAYS matter more.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I am actually curious if that proofreading/revision by MCA and the new journal entries are anything interesting - but not curious enough to buy and play EE. Plus, I am not that much of a fan to remember all the original dialogue anyway. I hope someone makes a comprehensive comparison at some point.

 

[Lilura]

I'm sure ppl will do a tlk comparison.

 

[CRD]

All cynicism aside, what is the problem here?

some people don't know when it's time to stop before moving from pretending to real world retarded.

 

[Gerrard]

BTW if you own the original PS:T on GOG, the EE is discounted 30%.

So 70% of the price for 1% amount of work done on the game in relation to the original.

 

[Goral]

Crediting the individual/s responsible, is better than crediting the company, especially when said company has been defunct for nearly two decades. Avellone, Sawyer, Cain and Urquhart mean more to anyone now than "Black Isle/Interplay". They hold more weight, because they are still part of the industry.

Except when you google Black Isle you can easily see everyone who worked on P:T but when you google Beamdog the names that will come up will have nothing to do with P:T (except for MCA). And because the firm doesn't exist anymore it would be more likely someone would google it and learn that Beamdog were only modders. With things going as they are soon enough Beamdog will be associated with P:T not Black Isle. What's more, most people remember only the company name and don't know who Dan Spitzley or Tim Cain are so we end up with "Bethesda created Fallout" mentioned not only by gamers but also gaming journalists.

Also, Beamdog has the tendency to not only erase the name of Black Isle on the store page but also from trailers AND from the game itself on top of it. Compare:



with



No Black Isle suddenly. To me it's outrageous and I would like people would know what shitty company Beamdog is. They really are parasites of the industry.

 

[CRD]

Who the fuck cares about the logo of an old company.

You play a game not a fucking logo, seriously, if that is all the criticism you can throw to the EE and constantly complaining about it, it's probably time to think about your life priorities.

 

[Turjan]

Who the fuck cares about the logo of an old company.

You play a game not a fucking logo, seriously, if that is all the criticism you can throw to the EE and constantly complaining about it, it's probably time to think about your life priorities.

Hey, we post on the Codex! That's all you need to know about life priorities.

 

[Sykar]

Post negative reviews for Planescape: Torment while you still can, after April 11th all reviews will be merged and EE will profit from positive reviews that praised the original.

Much better to flood the "EE" game with negative comments and ratings instead.

 

[Black]

He fights for what he believes in.

Which is?

Alright Codex people, PST:EE is now live. There's a FAQ section on the Beamdog website which may answer some of your questions. In addition, here are some design decisions that I made as the PST:EE Project Lead:

• No new party members, quests, NPCs, areas or cinematic movies
• No new writing by anyone except Chris Avellone. In case you're wondering, Chris wrote a couple of new journal entries, adjusted a few special ability (i.e. Morte's Skull Mob) textual descriptions and composed the text that is displayed on the new "Welcome Screen". He also designed the Steam Achievements (wrote the text and specified the icon appearance) and named the new main menu buttons (i.e. Options = Alter Senses)
• No changes to existing writing except for a proofreading pass of the original game text by Chris Avellone (he asked to do this)
• No kits/classes/races/spells/items from BG2 or IWD
• No changes to the combat and general gameplay
• No "Story Mode" or "Heart of Fury" difficulty settings
• No multiplayer

Note that when I say "writing" I'm referring to the text that the player can access within the gameworld i.e. by talking to NPCs, inspecting objects, spells, items and the journal. That doesn't include text that is accessed outside of the gameworld such as the technical descriptions which explain how new UI options like "Zoom Lock" or "Hardware Mouse Cursor" function. The descriptions of those options were written by the developers who worked on implementing them, not by Chris.

All cynicism aside, what is the problem here? This is the best scenario anyone could have hoped for. Had anyone on the Codex a week ago said "There's a rumour that the mind behind PS:T, MCA, will be leading a conservative re-release of PS:T" - I would've laughed my fucking ass off.

Had Avellone not been credited, I'd understand the emphasis on crediting Black Isle/Interplay upfront, but this is a far better way to pay respect.

Crediting the individual/s responsible, is better than crediting the company, especially when said company has been defunct and irrelevant for nearly two decades. Avellone, Sawyer, Cain and Urquhart mean more to anyone now than "Black Isle/Interplay". They hold more weight, because they are actually still part of the industry.

A company is only as good as the people who work there. Bioware is a perfect example. Look at the history of that name and tell me you don't go from smiling to cringing. The individuals ALWAYS matter more.

I fail to see the need for PT EE.

 

[Junmarko]

No Black Isle suddenly. To me it's outrageous and I would like people would know what shitty company Beamdog is. They really are parasites of the industry.

Dude, Bioware was the developer behind BG2 and largely behind BG1, I don't see them listed either.

Now think about Mass Effect: Andromeda, still upset?

Company names mean nothing.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Are they even allowed to use BIS logo?

 

[Goral]

Who the fuck cares about the logo of an old company.

It's not about logo, it's about truth and giving proper credit to the right parties where credit is due. Beamdog are modders, even Dragonspear is a mod and so far they've been making money only by leeching. With Planescape: Torment it's similar but even worse since they've had nothing to do with it and yet they are distorting the history and claim to be its developers, that's what bothers me. A company like Beamdog is cancer to the industry, they have spewed only SJW mods so far while asking horrendous amounts of money. It doesn't bother you? Good for you, thankfully it's RPG Codex and we rant here how shitty Bethesda and Bioware are.

Dude, Bioware was the developer behind BG2 and largely behind BG1, I don't see them listed either.

Except I don't care about that shitty company and the difference here is that Bioware employees are profiting from this greatly and they all agreed to it. Former Black Isle workers don't have a luxury like that. Even if they wouldn't give a damn the fact they're lying and distorting the history and parasitizing another company would still bother me.

 

[Rostere]

Sorry guys, you can bitch and moan all you want, this is



It is a PST thingy which Chris Avellone was involved with and which he says is made to come closer to his vision of the game. I don't care if it is total shit, it would be worth buying just to support the general idea.